Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a thin, piping
voice, “Nicholas Vedder? why, he is dead and gone these eighteen years! There was
a wooden tombstone in the churchyard that used to tell all about him, but that’s
rotten and gone too.”
“Where’s Brom Dutcher?”
“Oh, he went o to the army in the beginning of the war; some say he was killed
at the storming of Stony-Point—others say he was drowned in a squall at the foot
of Antony’s Nose. I don’t know—he never came back again.”
“Where’s Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?”
“He went o to the wars, too; was a great militia general, and is now in
Congress.”
Rip’s heart died away, at hearing of these sad changes in his home and friends,
and nding himself thus alone in the world. Every answer puzzled him too, by
treating of such enormous lapses of time, and of matters which he could not
understand: war—Congress-Stony-Point;—he had no courage to ask after any
more friends, but cried out in despair, “Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?”
“Oh, Rip Van Winkle!” exclaimed two or three. “Oh, to be sure! that’s Rip Van
Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree.”
Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself as he went up the
mountain; apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now
completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself
or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat
demanded who he was, and what was his name?
“God knows!” exclaimed he at his wit’s end; “I’m not myself—I’m somebody
else—that’s me yonder-no—that’s somebody else, got into my shoes—I was myself
last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they’ve changed my gun, and
everything’s changed, and I’m changed, and I can’t tell what’s my name, or who
I am!”
The by-standers began now to look at each other, nod, wink signicantly,
and tap their ngers against their foreheads. There was a whisper, also, about
securing the gun, and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief; at the very
suggestion of which, the self-important man with the cocked hat retired with
some precipitation. At this critical moment a fresh, comely woman pressed
through the throng to get a peep at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby
child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began to cry. “Hush, Rip,” cried
she, “hush, you little fool; the old man won’t hurt you.” The name of the child,
the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections
in his mind.
“What is your name, my good woman?” asked he.
“Judith Cardenier.”
“And your father’s name?”
“Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it’s twenty years since he
went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since,—his dog
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